Midtown South Africa

The first game of the 2010 World Cup in South Africa got underway at 10 A.M. E.T. But in Johannesburg, it was already 4 P.M., and the bar at Braai, a South African restaurant and bar in Midtown, was busy. I joined nearly a hundred expatriates to watch their team play Mexico to a 1-1 tie. The individuals in the crowd had skin of all hues, but everyone except me was wearing the national team colors, yellow and green; I wore journalistically neutral gray. Here’s an account, with time-stamps from the game.

00.00: South Africa wins the coin toss. The bar erupts in applause. “At least we’ll win something today,” someone shouts out, to general laughter. Lined at the bar are fans wearing jerseys, official World Cup T-shirts, a young woman sports the South African flag on her back, like a cape.

00.50: “Swarm, swarm, my bees,” an ardent fan in front of me mutters. And through the speakers, we could hear the stadium in Johannesburg buzzing with a terrifying noise that would be perfect on the “Lost” soundtrack.

07.47: Mexico gets whistled for a foul. The first of several deafening cheers. Braai is brick-lined, small and longer than it is wide, with thatch lining the roof and a big projection screen in back.

15.20: The “vuvuzela”—one of those long, plastic bugles—makes its first dinosaur call from the back room, where people are sitting at two long tables, assembled as if at a banquet, but most of them were strangers fifteen minutes earlier. That horn, which will soon become incessant, belongs to Dave Kuzmanich (in uniform), who’s originally from Johannesburg, but has lived in New York for thirteen years. Next week, he’ll be back home to take in six games.

18.26: South Africa just misses a goal. South Africa is being outplayed, says Boyd Varty, who runs a safari company in Kruger National Park and is visiting New York while his country hosts the World Cup. Yet he’s hopeful about the game: “It’s the South African way to be pessimistic up until the very end, and then somehow pull it together.”

21.25: “It feels a little like the Rugby World Cup in 1995,” Varty’s friend Rob Breen says, his eyes on the TV above the bar. “I really feel the buzz.”

43.13: A great crossing ball by South Africa, but a missed header. Gasps from the crowd.

44.17: Another missed header, another missed chance. The crowd again gasps but then does something unusual in this American’s experience of watching sports: they laugh. And I’m laughing, too, the kind of laughter that spreads around a roller-coaster car as it cruises back to the starting point—pure exhilaration.

Half: I feel better about disturbing people when the game isn’t on. I meet Brett Curtin, who moved here from Cape Town in 1997 and opened Braai almost two years ago. Throughout the first half he’s surveyed the game and the crowd from a back wall, pleased at the scene he’s helped facilitate. “As one of the few South African restaurants in New York, we’ve tried to create a home base here for people to support the side.”

I also meet a woman with a high voice who was screaming throughout the first half. Angeline Chidowore is originally from Zimbabwe, but today she’s wearing yellow and green. She has a shaved head, dark skin, and giant hoop earrings. When I approach her, she looks as though she’s been waiting to be interviewed. Does she have the day off, I ask? “Of course,” she says. “June 11th, today, is the most important day of the year. Football is more than a sport. It’s a way of life, a religion.” She’s rooting for all the African teams in the tournament: Ghana, Cameroon, Ivory Coast, Nigeria. “We’re going to show people that Africa is more than just what they see on TV.” But all attention returns to the TV, as the second half begins.

55.11: Goal, South Africa! The front row of the bar is standing on their chairs. Hugs and high fives are exchanged. Cameras flash, it’s very, very loud.

65.19: “I’m going to have a heart attack,” says Andy Steyn, a commodities trader who moved here from Jo’burg in 1986. He and his friend Barrie Arnold were nice enough to provide me with some analysis at the half: they were hoping for a defensive second half and hoping the strikers got just a chance or two, and could take it.

74.31: A horn arrives up in front of the bar, to general delight! The horns communicate back and forth from front to back in turns, like lowing cows. I put away my notebook, just a fan now.

79.00: Goal, Mexico. Silence.

81.00: Joe Biden, looking a bit glum in a red blazer, appears on the screen sitting in front of an elderly black man in a long green-and-yellow striped stocking cap. It takes a moment to realize that this wizard is Desmond Tutu. “He always looks like a homeless person when he’s supporting the team,” Barrie Arnold tells me.

89.00: Post! A South African player hits the post on a breakaway. The bar responds with agonized laughter.

90.00: Another missed chance for South Africa!

At the final whistle, the patrons offer up a rousing cheer, raise their drinks. The horns go off in concert. Steyn and Arnold, my commentators, said they’d be thrilled with a tie. And a tie it is. Still, for this American, it remains odd to find satisfaction in a match without resolution.

Ian Crouch is a contributing writer and a member of The New Yorker’s editorial staff.

Under the southern portion of the city exists its negative image: a network of more than two hundred miles of galleries, rooms, and chambers.

As the years passed, Tom grew more entrenched in his homelessness. He was absorbed in lofty fantasies and private missions, aware of the basest necessities and the most transcendent abstractions, and almost nothing in between.